Hurt
by oldmule
Summary: Harry, Ruth, redemption.
1. Chapter 1

When he thought of her, it hurt.

There was something within him that ached with the love of her.

It mattered not that that love was unfulfilled: that it was unconsummated. All that mattered was that he felt it. That it overwhelmed him. That physically and emotionally he felt her within him… when she was close… and when she was far.

She never left him.

But she had left him.

And she was far.

He knew not where… he simply knew that he hurt and he ached and that he still loved her.

One day passed and then the next and the inexorable pain was less acute… Less acute by the merest of margins.

Across the grid her desk would always be her desk, no matter who filled it.

In truth, no one filled it.

No one had one jot of her sheer bloody genius. No one sparked with the inspired jolt of revelation that she had…that she had had.

Past tense, Harry.

Past.

And futureless.

How many times had he sat here, the dinosaur that he was: paper exposed, pen in hand. How many times had he attempted to write this letter: in a world of electronics, of bit rates, of data and the magical ether that could transport his words across the globe. How many times with no address, with no inbox, with no source of receipt had he sought to find the words to tell her?

The paper remained pristine, the pen unused. There were no words. And even if there were, she could not read them.

And then, when he had given up the hope, but not the love … there she sat, before him. Her face filled with pain and hurt and betrayal. Her family, that was not his, destroyed before her eyes and the blame for it laid bare at his feet.

When he thought of her, it hurt.

When she looked at him accusingly, it hurt.

And yet he would rather the hurt of those piercing eyes …because they were here, before him. She was here before him and perhaps he may have the chance, just the one chance…. to tell her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Had no idea where this was going but I think it will be a short journey through the most difficult, most hurtful, personal moments of a love affair.**

 **Leading, of course, to something not quite as brutal as we were served. Leading to redemption.**

 **Thanks, as ever for reading and or reviewing.**

* * *

Her eyes gazed at the face … the face she had lost, she had craved … she had thought she would never see again.

But here he was.

And she hated herself for still loving that face.

She hated herself for being the cause: for being the road that had driven a good, honest, innocent, loving man to his death; to the orphaning of his son; to an end undeserved; a life unfulfilled.

She hated herself for the regret and the guilt and the loss of her own simple, peaceful lifestyle and she hated that after all this time trying to forget and forge herself a new role, a new world, a new life, that she should be feeling the same thrill, the same emotional overload, the same overwhelming love ... as she looked at the face of Harry Pearce.

And she hated herself because while she pleaded, begged and cried for the lives of those she had cherished, she knew the decisions he was forced into, the arguments he made, were right.

Her anger would vent at him but it was at her own feet that the true disdain lay.

Her family was gone.

And she had caused it.

Her life was gone… her life in the sun; her life of semi reality; her life of make believe.

The hurt of it all was overwhelming.

Everyday she had thought of him.

She had conjured up his eyes, his smile, his smell.

As the warm Mediterranean waters had enveloped her, she had lost herself in the touch of his chilled lips on the coldest, lonliest of mornings besides the Thames.

And as she looked at him now, she knew she loved him … still.

She always would.

And for that she didn't deserve to be happy. For that, George had died. For that, Nico was fatherless. For that, she deserved this agony of pain.

For that she deserved nothing but what befell her.


	3. Chapter 3

It came to him quickly, abruptly and with a sudden realisation. It made total sense. It was the inevitable truth of both their lives.

'Marry me, Ruth', he would say ...as much statement as question.

For that was what had been revealed to him ... as her shoulder brushed his, seated side by side within the sparsely populated church.

He loved her and he believed she did him. One still revolved around the other, close but never truly colliding: in orbit, reliant, dependent but too distant to touch.

She appeared to no longer blame him for all that had happened after Cyprus. She had asked him for a drink and eventually they had gone. No longer the nervous angst of that first date. This time it was two people who knew what they were, the one to the other and no longer had to say it, nor even allude to it. So they had chatted comfortably. And relaxed.

And that was them. Nothing spoken but still brimming with an overload of feeling.

And so this ... it made perfect sense.

'Marry me Ruth'.

Let us be what we are already. Let us live a life and not the semblance of one. Let us truly be there, together.

He had been to too many funerals. The thought of ever attending hers, this time for real, was unacceptable. Unthinkable. Unbearable.

He couldn't pretend anymore. They needed each other.

They were each other.

And so he asked her the easiest question of his life, so easy it was indeed statement, not question.

* * *

Ruth, sat in the church and thought about Danny.

About the grief that time never allowed.

She thought of Jo, to whom neither she, nor any of them, had been permitted to say goodbye: her relatives requesting only family at her funeral.

... But they were family.

The only ones to whom the truth was out there, in the open.

She thought most of all about George and the other funeral from which she had been sadly lacking, her presence again restricted.

Her chance to say an apologetic goodbye, understandably unwelcome.

She thought about Nico ... his big bright brown eyes gazing at the coffin of his father.

And all because she had dared to believe she could have a normal life.

"Marry me Ruth."

* * *

Rejection and separation. Longing and denial. Need and expectation.

They continued to revolve, one around the other, but now the ever present shadow of their satellite bodies no longer reassured. It hurt. It reminded. It stung.

And though an offer of marriage had been refused, they bickered and sniped and wounded, as though they were indeed the wedded couple they were not.

Until equilibrium was reached once more.

Until they orbited one another at that safe but reassuring distance.

Until the next crisis point.

Until Elena.


	4. Chapter 4

Ruth felt the ground slip away from beneath her. Crumble and collapse.

The rock below, the rock that was steadfast, solid, immovable, hard granite. The rock that was Harry's love was being wrought apart. Cleft by the elegant reappearance of the past.

He hadn't needed to tell her that they had been lovers, she knew it. Knew it by the look on his face.

What she did not know was how this would feel. How incredibly painful this would feel. How debilitating this would feel.

Ruth, the facilitator of assignations. Ruth the employee.

Ruth the second-hand ... thrust aside for the revival of the glorious past.

Ruth the present, now the former.

Elena his lover, the mother of his child, his bitter regret.

That single moment in the park. Seeing her in his arms. How painful. How hurtful.

How strange that in all these years, all these many years not once had she felt the warmth of his arms around her. How ridiculous, she thought. How sad that now that chance was evaporating further.

We could never be more together than we are right now.

So close on the grid, so incredibly bonded and matched, a union behind the doors of Thames House. No more.

No union. No bond. No Thames House.

She had given him the opportunity, all he had to say was 'don't go'.

But no.

She was gone.

A civil servant.

The ground beneath her feet gone, her habitat gone, her togetherness gone.

Ruth, who would have died for Section D...for him...sectionless and alone.

And yet it was right here and right now that she began to live again.

Distracted, preoccupied and out of control. That was how Harry felt. His head spinning with consequences, regret and guilt and the intense sense that this could only turn out badly.

He saw the hurt in Ruth's eyes, he saw her doubt and her fears but somehow he could not find the words to reassure her. He could not tell her the history and the fault and the downright distasteful lie that he had originated to turn Elena.

He was too ashamed.

Too guilty.

Could all too easily envisage the disapproval on her face, her disappointment in him. The admission of another dirty secret to drive a wedge between them.

And so he said nothing.

And when he told her to move on, to leave the grid, to go and work for Towers he saw her reaction and how easy she thought it for him to say.

Easy.

So very, very far from easy.

How he wanted to rescind it. How he missed her every day. How lonely he was. How isolated on the grid. How he needed to see her face and hear her voice and look into those bright blue pools and lose himself.

No, not easy.

But necessary...to protect her, to get her away from the mud that clung to him, that surrounded him and would surely this time swallow and submerge him.

'The door needs some work', the estate agent said. But it didn't, it was perfect. Perfect peeling paint.

Ruth Evershed, house buying.

The semblance of a life. The concept of a weekend. An evening...something more that needing to eat half an hour before needing to go to bed. A whole evening.

A life. Living.

She looked at the windows, the light, the garden and her response was instinctive. There they could have breakfast; under that tree they could share the shade when it got too hot; there their bedroom; there his office; in that corner a bookcase for her books, he could have half the top shelf.

There.

Here.

A life together.

None of it worked without him.

She could see it.

All she had failed to see when her limitations were the grid... when she had told him they could not be more together.

Here they could be together.

She knew it.

Finally.

Here they could have the life that he wanted...had wanted...still wanted?


	5. Chapter 5

**Still skipping through the storyline but approaching some kind of** **denouement. Thanks for reading and lovely reviews.**

* * *

Not emotionally forthright. No, indeed.

Guilt could look a lot like love.

And jealousy was something to which she could seemingly admit.

A sonnet it was not.

But it was the truth.

* * *

Harry was still spiraling. Dragging Ruth back into the mire.

Questionable decisions and ever more desperate actions leading to Jim Coaver's death.

And that was how they ended up here: beside the river again; ripped apart again; failing to find the words again.

She tried to tell him…about the house…about finally understanding what they could be.

Trying to tell him something ...wonderful.

But he cut her short, demanding she forge a path and build a life for herself. Precisely what she was trying to tell him.

He walked away, with what dignity he had, before being cuffed and thrust into the back of a van.

Separated.

Hopeless.

Futureless.

She, facing a world devoid of his face, his voice, his presence.

He, facing extradition: another country and rough justice.

Bruised and battered, he said goodbye to his life: ready to face the consequences; the consequences for every single reprehensible thing he deserved to be punished for.

And there were many.

His guilt was overwhelming and he no longer had the fight to protest one ounce of innocence.

He had failed.

She deserved more than him. She deserved another chance. Another family, free from him, from his poisonous influence.

But, as ever, there was Elena. And she would not let him go. She clicked her fingers once more.

* * *

Harry walked through the long grass beside the estuary, toward the old tower. He had the feeling this would not be simple.

"Ruth…" Erin offered up her phone.

"I suppose I have you to thank for -" he began, but she cut him off.

"Harry, don't trust her."

"Ruth, I know you don't –"

"I acknowledge that I'm never likely to be Elena's biggest fan, considering …well…everything, but it's more than that."

Harry stopped and nodded the others ahead.

"What have you found?'

"A trail, faint and buried deep, but it's there, between her and a nationalistic Russian group. She has another agenda, Harry."

Silence.

"I'm coming over there."

"No," he said firmly, "You need to stay out of this, Ruth."

"It's not new, Harry, the link was there… in Berlin…before you."

* * *

Working the ops room, close to Towers, the scenario unfolds around her.

She wishes she were there. She wishes she were near him. She fears the emotional blackmail Elena wields over him.

She does not know that his world is collapsing in incomprehension; that all his regrets are built on a lie and nothing is as it seems. His decades of guilt have been worthless.

He is not half the spy he thought he was. And nowhere close to the spy that Elena still is.

The Home Secretary throws down the phone and collapses onto the chair beside Ruth: elation, relief and adrenalin surging through him.

"Thank god," he breathes, "Danger averted, population safe, Anglo Russian relations assured."

He looks up at her but there is something in his face that stops the air in her chest.

"What?" she demands, "What is it?"

"Harry…" he says, quietly, "I'm sorry, Ruth, but he's been stabbed."


	6. Chapter 6

"You shouldn't be here!"

"The fact you no longer work for me, doesn't preclude you from knocking, then?"

Harry turns, mid way through changing into a clean shirt: a torn, bloody one lays discarded on the back of his office chair.

"You should be in hospital!"

"I have been. I'm fine."

She walks up to him, lifting the edge of his shirt, peering at the large dressing above his left hip.

"You're not fine, Harry."

She glares at him, her face remains annoyed and defiant. He resumes fastening his shirt buttons.

"You said don't get shot, Ruth… I don't recall you mentioning stabbing."

"It's not funny."

He sits down heavily in his chair, looking exhausted, wincing at the pain.

"I've been extradited, beaten, betrayed and stabbed. Everything I've believed for nearly thirty years has proved one grand glorious lie. You're right, Ruth, it has not been the most amusing of days."

"So, why are you here, Harry?"

He shrugs. He has nowhere else to be.

Picking up his suit jacket, she turns to the door.

"Come on, we're leaving."

"I can't, Ruth, I need to –"

"We're leaving."

She slides the door open.

"Besides, there's something you need to see."

* * *

She drives. He sleeps.

"Harry…" she says softly, her hand squeezing his forearm.

He stirs, peering first at her and then out of the passenger window.

"Where are we?"

She steps out of the car, without answering.

As he walks up the path behind her, he sees the peeling paint, he is about to speak but she stops him.

"Just don't say anything."

She opens the door and they cross through a narrow hallway, out into a light, open, airy, empty kitchen.

"I'll wait in the garden. Have a look around."

"The house you've put an offer on?" he says, slowly comprehending.

"I'd like to know what you think."

He nods and watches her walk away.

It is not necessarily what he would have expected her to choose but yet he can picture her here. He pictures her clothes and her books and her.

And it is a life so far away. So far from all they had been and all he still was.

So far away from London and the grid…so far away from him.

And yet, this is what he has asked her to do. To build a new life.

She sits on the old bench in the garden. It is split and the wood is old and dry and untreated. She envisages each room he enters and tries to imagine every thought and reaction.

More than anything she ever wanted, she wants him to love it as much as she; to see it all, as well as she.

He crosses out into the garden towards her. The late evening sun about to disappear behind a well established beech tree at the bottom of the field behind the house.

She offers up a glass of red wine.

"I could only find one glass," she smiles.

"Though it seems you managed to rustle up a whole bottle," he says, nodding at the open bottle which stands at her feet.

"Amazing what you can find in your handbag when you look."

He sits beside her and takes the glass.

For several moments they say nothing, both staring at the myriad of insects highlighted against the last rays of the sun. The world is quiet and still, bar the distant sound of waves on shale, in and out, breathing with them.

"It's beautiful," he says, eventually.

She looks at him, his eyes are still fixed on the horizon.

"You like it?'

"It's very you."

"There's not enough book space."

He smiles.

"Maybe you need to start buying ebooks, Ruth."

"Harry Pearce, wash your mouth out."

He laughs. She laughs.

"Did you see the big bookcase in the living room?"

He nods.

"I'll fill the majority of it, but you can have half of the top shelf."

She can feel the change in his breathing.

He can feel the air stand still.

"And if you need more space then there's the spare room. I think it would suit us better as an office."

He forces the word, which seemingly dare not risk escaping his lips.

"…Us?"

Her hand reaches out and takes the single wine glass from him, she takes a sip and then hands it back.

"Yes, Harry. Us."

* * *

 **An epilogue, if you fancy?**


	7. Epilogue

**Thanks again to those who have read. Finally a short epilogue, that will hopefully round things off.**

* * *

The rain patters against the window, distorting his view of the garden: so lush and green that he can virtually hear it growing.

He stands, hands pushed into the pockets of his loosely tied dressing gown, bare feet cold against the floor tiles.

From behind him a pair of arms slide around his waist, the fingers of one hand reaching to brush across his chest.

"Breakfast?"

He nods.

The arms slip away.

She fills the kettle and reaches for the eggs.

But the view stops her.

The perspective from this side of the kitchen offers up a window: a window, framing not the world outside, but the world within.

A solid, silent, statuesque figure; broad back and bare legs; framed within her world.

Where he belongs.

Where he has always belonged.

He can see her, reflected in the pane, lit by the soft kitchen under lights.

She is seemingly paused, standing fixed and gazing at something beyond.

And as he looks at her, it hurts.

There is that within him that aches with the love of her.

It overwhelms him.

Outside the world is unimportant.

Nothing can touch him.

Nothing in his world matters bar the one thing that exists within these four walls.

He turns, realizing it is him, that she is gazing at.

There is no better view for either.

She smiles.

He smiles.

And they make breakfast.


End file.
